What is evolutionism?

By evolution we mean the theory first made popular by the late Charles Darwin, and since elaborated by others, in which it is sought to be demonstrated that man evolved from the anthropoid ape; the ape in turn evolved through many stages from a living primordial cell, which either found its way, so it is stated, to this earth from other planets or worlds, or came into existence by spontaneous generation; this process of man’s evolution, demanding millions of years for its accomplishment.

A few years ago the theory of evolution was carrying all before it. "Development" was the magic key which was to open every lock, and so use the treasures of nature. When applied, however, the ascertained results of the use of this key were far from commending themselves to the thoughtful, not to say Christian, mind. With more or less modification, it was taught that the world as we see it to-day has been developed from primary matter which has gradually organized itself according to certain principles which are not supernatural, with the result of life in its animal and vegetable displays, of which man is the latest product. So popular did the theory become that it was adopted by many who still called themselves by the name of Christian. In some cases it was modified in the effort to harmonize it with the truths of revelation; while in most it was seen that if the one were true, the other was necessarily untrue. Many of the people of God trembled, like Eli, for the safety of the ark. Was it possible that all we had learned of God as the creator and preserver of all things; of the essential distinctions between the various classes of the animal and vegetable creation; of the uniqueness, personality and responsibility of man to his Maker — was it possible that all these were mistaken ideas of an old-fashioned religion which were utterly inconsistent with the real facts in the case

In Heb. 11:3 we read, "By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear" (R.V.) Evolution is an hypothesis which leaves out God and denies creation. It is a mere effort of imagination to account for the universe, and an effort that set aside that definite and universally observed fact which underlies all natural science, the permanence of species. So the ancients, in the West as well as the East, suggested cosmogonies no less fanciful. But the word of God is now scripture, which alone lets us hear what is worthy of God and satisfactory to man. "He spake, and it was; He commanded, and it stood fast." Details are only revealed when man was about to be created. For scripture is a moral book; and God's good pleasure is in men. Hence, when the "days" begin, how often we read in Gen. 1 "God said."

Distinct acts of creation harmonise with creation as a whole, whilst being distinct: as each piece in a dissected map is in itself distinct, yet requisite to the completeness of the map in its entirety. In all God's works, creation as well as revelation, there is a wonderful co-ordination, and mutual adaptation, and in this sense no one specific act of creation is independent. But as to the fact of distinct and separate acts of creation, Scripture is express, and all human investigation and discovery, confirm it. Speaking of the grass, the herb, and the fruit tree, it says of each, "whose seed was in itself after his kind;" and of fishes "after their kind," also of terrestrial animals that they were created "after their kind:" i.e. God created each kind separately, endowing each with its own seed; as conversely we read in 1 Cor. 15:38-39 that to each seed God has given its own body, and that in a similar manner one flesh differs from another. Hence in principle the definition of species is true, viz., "a species consists of individuals having a common resemblance, and reproducing their like by generation." The records of geology, confirmed by all human experience and observation, establish the fixity within reasonable limits of species as above defined, and are utterly opposed to the theory of transmutation.

Absurd as is the notion of transmigration or metempsychosis, we could more readily believe it than that of evolution, and think the doctrine of Pythagoras just about as reasonable as that of Darwin, both being in fact, and in effect, simply heathenish. All that believe the Bible know very well that there are such beings as angels, — that they were created long before man, and that as an order of creation (we speak not now of what redemption will accomplish in due time, and in this respect) they are superior to man. Yet the pre-existence of a superior class of creatures is antagonistic to the theory of transmutation. In all points, Divine revelation, human experience, and geological records are opposed to it. We readily acknowledge that Mr. Darwin in his work on the "Origin of Species" has brought together many highly interesting facts — facts of importance in truly scientific investigation; but there is an infinite gap between any conclusion or conclusions they really support and justify, and the monstrous conclusion it is simply assumed that they warrant. Interesting natural phenomena are here most artfully intermixed with ingenious but unfounded surmises, whilst not a thing which essentially makes for the Darwinian or Lamarckian theory is proved, nor is one which makes for the Bible account of creation disproved. Whether we go back to the period of Egyptian history, or much farther back to the glacial period, or to any geological period whatever, the necessary links in the chain of evidence are wholly wanting. That every germinal vesicle in nature has sprung from one primordial spore, — vesicles which, whatever may be their apparent resemblance, are each endowed with its own form of life, and each requiring a principle of life peculiar to itself, in order to fertilise it, — that vesicles thus specially distinct could have sprung from one primordial spore, and this from some inherent power of development, amounts to a moral contradiction, and is even more absurd than to say that all the chemical elements have originated from one pure and simple; for here, at least, it could be no question of opposed organic tendencies leading to separate and independent existence.

The fact that a species consists of individuals bearing a common resemblance and reproducing their like by generation, remains (allowance being made for a certain range in each case within which variation is possible, though unstable) unaltered and unalterable. That the two processes are going on at the same time, viz. propagation by generation, and transmutation, would seem an extraordinary state of things, yet this must be if transmutation is true, for what is there to put a stop to it? — and if stopped, why (for each genus and species) just where it is, — the relative proportions, of the various parts of animate nature so beautifully observed. But the gap between even the highest developed ape and the lowest example of humanity is immense; — how is this, and what has become of the missing links? It seems to us, in short, that the Darwinian theory is sufficiently refuted by those cases of evolution which nature does exhibit. For instance, the egg, the larva, the chrysalis, the butterfly, and then the egg again, — yet from the egg to the butterfly but one life, but one act of generation. So again we find the egg, the tadpole, the frog, and again the egg, i.e. the circle of evolution completed in one life and with only one act of generation, — all originating in one germinal vesicle, to which, specifically, it returns. In no other way or sense is evolution possible. The doctrine of development, whether as applied to biology or to theology is really infidel, — an attempt to stamp with the Divine sanction, and thus to justify, thorough and fatal departure from the truth as contained in Divine revelation.

Before however we are led to review how faith wrought in "the elders," we find one word is to ourselves. Verse 3 begins, "Through faith WE understand …" and the things seen in creation are brought before us. This is a very significant statement! In apostolic days it was evidently the common faith of Christians that "the worlds were framed by the Word of God." Is it the faith of all Christians today? We have just seen that faith is "the conviction of things not seen." We now discover that only faith can give us a proper understanding of the things that we do see. Nineteen centuries ago the philosophic world was full of weird theories as to the origin of creation. Equally weird theories fill philosophic minds today. All these theories, both ancient and modern, take it for granted that things that are seen were made of things that do appear; and the process, by which they think they were made, has received the name of evolution. The philosophers are very clever men, and they have provided themselves — especially in these modern days — with a really wonderful equipment for their researches. They only lack one thing. But that one thing is the only thing that counts! They lack the faith that enables anyone to understand. Through faith we understand the origin of creation. Without faith we do not understand it at all.

It is the well-known characteristic of Darwinism, that it substitutes a theory of the how for the why, with the effect of removing the appearance of design from nature. What appears like design may be but a consequence of the mode or conditions of production, — a consequence, not a cause; and the universe be the result of the operation of natural laws, apart from all supernatural superintendence or interference. As Huxley says, "For the notion that every organism has been created as it is, and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may be fairly termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations, the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them, and thrive; the many are unsuited and become extinguished." It is on account of this elimination of design out of the world that skeptics and materialists range themselves so unanimously under the leadership of Darwin; and this they proclaim a distinguished merit of his scheme. Others have, of course, taken it up who can by no means be classed with these, and thus it has received various modifications. But the original vice of the thing manifests itself through all, as far as possible from the spirit of Scripture, the attempt, which we have even been told is "the duty of the man of science, to push back the Great First Cause in time as far as possible." The beauty and blessedness of Scripture consists in its persistent effort to bring God nigh.

142 As to change of species, I must say, though I cannot enter into it here, there is no ground for asserting it. Mummies and geology all give us the same continuous species, as has been fully shewn, and no passing from one to another. Facts fail the assertors of it; and facts only are of any worth here. And as to evolutionism, while within the same species there is clearly development from the sperm to the plant, from the ovum to the full-grown creature, species appear perfect in starting, though in the kind of creature there is, as a general rule, progress up to man himself. And, so far from the stronger driving out the weaker during the subsistence of a race, the stronger are those that disappear.

I see nothing in the elaborate statement at the opening of the Belfast meeting which affects the evolution system, or divinely-formed species at all. Creation it does not touch, as none of them do. But more, that embryos were gradually formed in the womb was always known. That microscopic investigation has discovered segmental division, and the separation into an upper and lower set, with the lines between, may be very interesting to anatomists, adds nothing but details. So, that there are general principles of formation from lower to higher genera in the foetus growth is curious, and shows God's acting analogously, and with system, but no more, unless the contrary to the development theory, because after all men and women have human children, and cocks and hens chickens, and it shows that these analogies of formation do not make intermingled species now. Phillips in his Geology, though afraid to say so, shows there was no cross-intermingling of species. And it is one of the remarkable things that from the same materials and analogous processes, both in plants and animals, specific results are produced. The oak and the bramble grow from the same soil, but the oak does not become a bramble, nor the bramble an oak. Forms of inception, and food, and digestion are the same, and we have eggs, and upper and lower segmentary division, but a man grows into a man, and a pig into a pig.

I do not see that evolution or development, once creation is fully recognised, is anything that concerns us. We all admit it. A corn of wheat, if it has lain 4,000 years without germination, if it meets "the scent of water" will sprout. Supposing the microscope discover there protoplasm itself, or appropriating power leading to organic growth, that is what in English we call "life" in its broadest sense, tree, animal, or man; in every case protoplasm in a cell. What was there 4,000 years is evolved, appropriates extrinsic stuff, and is a plant of wheat, and will, by "seed in itself after its kind," produce more evolved wheat. Now if God pleased (and who can say He did not) - chose - when chaos reigned, to-hu (wasteness), bo-hu (emptiness), to form such plants all at once from protoplasm to wheat, or an oak, and cause them to produce "after their kind," by an instantaneous act of will, what should or could prevent it? This the evolutionists do not pretend to explain, nor can they - that is, how protoplasm came there.

5 They - for science is always, and necessarily atheistical, when it does not honestly confess ignorance (and honest in this sense its pride seldom is), because it can only follow experimentally the series of what does exist, and can only trace it as existing, but how or why it exists can know nothing, for that is no matter of science - they, to get rid of God, will say matter is eternal, but not only cannot prove it, but a finite mind cannot have the thought "eternity" in it, so that all that is wilful falsehood. Notwithstanding, in spite of us, we know there is a cause, but that is not science. It is clearly seen change of species is another thing; God no doubt could have made it so physically, but it is not proved, and Darwin admits the proofs fail in geology, and if we are to believe the best searchers into the question it is disproved (as Phillips on "Geology of the Thames"). God may allow commixture, and mules, if He pleases in nearly related species, but this rather proves there is no such change, for no such race producing "after its kind" has been found; but it is another question.

Would not such an idea be out of analogy with the present creation, where God has made each after its kind? Genesis 1:11-12, 21-25. C.O.A.

A. There is and can be no good reason for the notion that creatures rose from the lower forms as the rule to the higher ones without God's creative act. The very word "creatures" implies as much. Scripture is most explicit that all things came into being through Him, and that apart from Him not one thing received being which has received being. All such unbelieving theories of development are therefore in rebellion against the word of God. A creative act introduced each new species.

No idea has been more diligently propagated by unbelievers during the last century than that of evolution, and though Darwin's theories as to how evolution can have been brought about have been, we understand, largely abandoned, yet the idea itself is still clung to as affording an alternative to the disliked truth of creation. In Genesis 1, with Divine foreknowledge we have this ten times repeated fact, which flatly denies evolution, and in practice it is continually verified. No species ever has developed into another species. Every creature reproduces itself after its kind, and never into another kind.